


fate is just a monster in your closet

by 1000ft



Series: hey arizona [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, Not a soulmate AU, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 04:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12999957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1000ft/pseuds/1000ft
Summary: Keith doesn’t believe in soulmates. People are whole on their own, have no missing pieces to be fit together.





	fate is just a monster in your closet

“I don’t believe in soulmates,” Keith lies.

 

Hunk gasps as if utterly, _horribly_ betrayed by this. Keith looks down to Lance, whose head is resting snug on Keith’s thigh, and watches the blue paladin’s eyebrows raise at Hunk as if to say _yeah, I’m with Keith on this one._

 

Hunk turns to Pidge, as if they’ll be any more willing to agree that soulmates are _real okay? It’s just too big of a universe to not have something like soulmates existing somewhere--come on, guys!_ Pidge wastes no time making a garbled, unintelligible-but-still-distinctly-negative noise from behind their laptop that has Hunk slumping forward and eyeing his next soulmate discourse victim (Coran) from across the room.

 

Keith watches the back-and-forth for a moment before Lance jostles his leg, burrowing his shoulders deeper into the couch under his back. The shock of Lance being this close--of having Lance touch him, lean on him, dismiss all pretense of formality and _snuggle up to him in the rec room_ \--is still present, but the strain of anxiety is easing its way out of Keith’s system with every occurence.

 

There have been a frequent amount of occurrences. Not that Keith’s complaining.

 

Watching out of the corner of his eye, he waits for Lance’s eyes to slip shut. Not asleep, but basking in their fifteen minutes between coalition meetings, soaking in the chatter of their ragtag family. Keith leans an elbow on the back of the couch so he can prop his head up as he stares down.

 

The vaguely-mutual crush that Keith’s been harboring has increased tenfold the past few weeks, and he pinpoints his and Lance’s time in the medbay, bloody knuckles and hand holding and all, as the turning point to whatever pressure that’s been building in their...friendship? Partnership? Relationship?

 

Keith’s mental state has been a large, pining _shrug_ for days now.

 

He and Lance are more than friends, Keith thinks, but the lack of closure--are they _dating_ ? Were the _I Like You_ s in the medbay _confessions_ ? Can they even _date_ in space?--feels like an itch under his skin that he can’t scratch, and Lance’s new behavior, the constant touching, the closeness, has his heart in overdrive. Every arm over his shoulder or hand at the small of his back sends Keith’s pulse skyrocketing, burning off the ground and right through the atmosphere.

 

Not two hours before they crashed into the rec room, Lance’s thumb had wiped hair away from his forehead. The previous night, it was imaginary grease on his cheekbone, and Keith _knows_ the grey-red stench of motor oil that he gets coated in when he cleaned his lion. When Lance wiped at his jaw, when his finger lingered on the shape of bone, Keith hadn’t smelled anything other than Lance’s skin, face both too close and too far away.

 

Keith thinks he understands that this is Lance’s way to get closer, to communicate, a silent _I’m Here_ , but it’s not Keith’s way. (Keith’s not sure what his way even _is.)_ He’s never wanted to be closer like this, never craved a touch as much as Lance’s.

 

Until he figures it out, Keith resolves, fingertips hesitating just a breath from the head of brown hair in his lap, maybe he can take to giving in the same way.

 

Lance hums, the sound content and _loving,_ when Keith shakily runs fingers through his hair.

 

-

 

Keith knows he can’t give quite as much--he can’t give touch the way Lance does.He wants to (needs to) _learn_ that gentleness, and he has to fight (fight, fight, fight, when is he not fighting?) not to flinch away from extended hands, or to uncurl stiff fingers from the flesh of his palm, to let himself touch softly.

 

Like now, running down long castle halls, in one of the rare moments of down time the Paladins have (that they utilize to their fullest in the way of Extreme Hide-N-Seek: Space Edition 2.0 1), Lance latches onto Keith’s hand. They’re trying to outrun the security drones and find a place to hide that Shiro, seeker in the main control room, won’t be able to see them on castle security cameras.

 

1(The paladins and a wide-eyed Allura had roped the impervious Takashi Shirogane into Extreme Hide-N-Seek: Space Edition 2.0 on grounds of **[redacted]** , information classified to a need-to-know basis involving the disastrous Space Edition 1.0 with the participation of **[redacted]** and a case of the Galran flu, strain Heximune Florisccscienx, which put Prince **[redacted]** in a two week long sick leave. Conditional secrecy has been negotiated: Shiro will play hide-n-seek in exchange for complete ignorance regarding **[redacted] [redacted]** “that motherfucking piece of trash Prince” **[redacted]** )

 

The skid of Lance’s shoes on the castle floor shakes Keith out of his thoughts, and he takes in the intersection of hallway Lance’s has pulled them to. Keith recognizes it.

 

He tugs Lance by his hand. Both of their palms are sweaty. “There’s a storage unit with no interior communicators this way, come on!”

 

It’s not until a silent ten minutes later, when Keith is chest-to-chest with Lance in a miniscule storage unit, that he realized the latch on the door locks automatically. On the outside. Keith takes a second to settle his hands on Lance’s upper arms, exist in the same space, before he breaks the news to Lance that they’re rather stuck in a high-tech broom closet.

 

They spend two hours banging on the closet door before Allura happens to walk by and let them out.

 

-

 

Keith doesn’t believe in soulmates. He’s not sure if he even believes in _souls_ . Certainly he’s not religious, doesn’t pin faith and hope on concepts that stem from cruel, dictatorial graves. But he does believe in the stars. He believes in the cosmos and the universe and vast, _vast_ expanses of life. So Keith can settle on the singularity that, while everything is made of cosmic dust, perhaps there’s a chance--a slim, impossible chance--that an individual’s brand of time-diluted star stuff is quite compatible with another individual’s brand of time-diluted star stuff.

 

-

 

When an arm is thrown over his shoulder post mission, Keith reaches steady fingers to Lance’s waist, hand settling over warmth that bleeds even through their armor, even through the cold castle air. Keith wants to burrow in, but thinks the action itself might be strange coming from him--loner Keith, cold, calloused Keith--so only indulges himself the slightest bit more than wrapping a hand around Lance’s waist.

 

He nudges into Lance’s ribs with his shoulder, presses his nose to the bare skin at the juncture of Lance’s jaw for the briefest moments, and Lance’s laughter is genuine gold-teal-green.

 

-

 

Keith doesn’t believe in soulmates. People are whole on their own, have no missing pieces to be fit together. But Keith does believe that star dust is drawn to star dust, and maybe being around someone like Lance, who’s got stars in his ocean eyes and galaxies hanging in the crook of a lopsided smile, who has Keith harboring the gut-churning desire to be _close, closer_ is, after all, how the universe wants him to say _I’m Here, and I think I love you ,too._

 

Maybe that’s what makes reaching back all the easier.

**Author's Note:**

> you: what the fuck was the thing about hide and seek?  
> me: [redacted]  
> also me: thanks for reading, sorry for typos or weird tense changes, I hope you enjoyed [redacted]


End file.
